‘Fire!’ shouted Edward, pointing at the bakery. ‘Hobbington, old friend, we must do something.’

‘Should I fetch buckets?’ asked the clergyman. Edward shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘The pace at which that fire is spreading would make buckets useless. We ideally need a pressurised system of pipes and tubes to spray water across the building from a distance, possibly carried on some kind of large vehicle.’

‘Such a thing would take many men to operate,’ observed the Reverend Hobbington.

‘Men and women,’ said Edward. ‘There is no reason whatever that women should be considered inferior to men in carrying out physically demanding tasks or taking on other responsibilities. In fact, should we ever have a system of government which functioned purely on the basis of a popular mandate, I think that women should be given an equal say to men.’

This is SO annoying to me. I have to agree with the anonymous who is sick of prematurely feminist heroines. It is far more interesting to create a character who actually manages to become heroic within the system of thought and structure of society that existed at the time.

It's also important to remember that our time is just one period in history. Attitudes will change from what they are now, too. Someday, our penchant for projecting our own attitudes on to both the past and the future (i.e. Star Trek, where everyone has the attitudes of a late 20th century NPR listener) will seem as silly and dated as those 1950s sci-fi movies in which people in the spacefaring future act exactly like 1950s Americans.

If I read one more historical romance where the 18th-century midwife protagonist has an advanced knowledge of germ theory and modern obstetrics, I think I will give up historical fiction for good. That goes double if said protagonist successfully performs a Caesarian section.